Lesson learned (again)

[stoken6]

A few weeks ago, my Nord took a thump in its soft bag, and one key was pushed out of place. It still worked, but was very stiff. I managed to pull the key back into position, and (miraculously) it seems to work 100% fine - although there was a faint rattle from inside the case.

 

It got through its gig on Sunday successfully, and I set it up on its stand at home to work on some new wiring for my loom/pedalboard. When I plugged it in, I found:

• Acoustic piano sounded fine
• EP, clav and *some* synth patches were very quiet

 

I briefly panicked, and a number of theories ran through my mind (did the damage unseat a circuit board? did a recent OS update kill my patches?). I did the sensible thing and connected a cable directly from the keyboard to the amp (bypassing my bespoke wiring/patching in my pedalboard). Everything worked fine.

 

Explanation: I had used a TRS-TRS lead to connect the headphone socket to a balanced input on my monitor (normally that cable feeds a stereo/unbalanced TRS input on my Rolls mixer). It's a lesson I repeatedly learn every 10 years or so...

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Stokely]

Along those same lines, twice now in the last couple months I've been at a gig, song starts and...nada from my ipad.  I immediately start checking things, assuming it's the glitch I had many months ago where midi and audio stopped working between my Modx and ipad.

I had turned down the master volume to fade out the end of a song and forgot to turn it back up.  The ipad was faithfully generating sound.  The lesson learned is to LEAVE THE MASTER ALONE and do that kind of thing with the parts, or even the release.  In my own defense, some performances have multiple parts so it's not one fader. 

[ImproKeys]

I could add a very funny story ... we were setting up for a very short and quick gig in my school and it all had to go very fast. We decided to use the compact e-drums. The PA was quite some foot away and the distance was very crowded and messed up with tables, chairs, whatever. So I connected the Audio cables from the drumset to the PA and was not getting any sound. I changed the cables from left to right, tried a different channel on the mixer. Nothing. Audience stood and waited. Our drummer ran and got a cajon and played the short gig on it.

After the intermezzo I took some time to investigate the problem. The thing was, the two cables were very long and twisted and I had built two "loops"; one end of cable A into the left output, the other end of the same cable into the right output. The same with cable B on the mixer. So there was literally no connection between the drums and the PA. We had a good laugh.

[JamPro]

I'll take a (fixable) mental error any time over a malfunctioning keyboard any day.

 

I have a saying in my studio: when a piece of hardware or software is not working, 98% of the time the problem exists between my two ears.

[MAJUSCULE]

My recent flub (twice in the past year) is plugging my 1/4" into the input on my keyboard rather than the output. Real idiot over here.

[Stokely]

The MODX, which honestly has a really lousy back panel that's hard to read and hard to access, has two 1/4" jacks first up in the line from the power iirc.  Very prominent, on any keyboard you'd assume they are the L and R main outs.  Well, they are the D/A inputs.   Every other gig I do a check and nope, no sound, and yep, I plugged my cables into those inputs.  I'm just about ready to put some gaffer's tape over them.

One thing I'll say about the Forte--it does it right.  Labels on the top and the plugin panel is slanted, so you can do everything from the front or the back.

[JohnDoe]

22 minutes ago, MAJUSCULE said:

My recent flub (twice in the past year) is plugging my 1/4" into the input on my keyboard rather than the output. Real idiot over here.

Same here! Mostly caused by timestress.

[Moonglow]

I thought this was going to be another “X-stand collapse” post. Glad to hear everything is okay.

[MathOfInsects]

Mixing my own tunes. Every time:

"Something someone is playing isn't working."

Detective time!

Solo the drums. Drums are good.

Solo the bass. Bass is good.

Solo the guitar. Guitar is good.

 

Solo the keys.

 

Oh.

 

And they're MY songs. 

[stoken6]

46 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Solo the keys.

 

Oh.

Man, was lockdown a revelation for me in terms of my (in)ability to keep time with myself...

 

Cheers, Mike.

[David Emm]

16 minutes ago, stoken6 said:

Man, was lockdown a revelation for me in terms of my (in)ability to keep time with myself...

 

 

I can relate.

I sometimes feel as if I need to be quantized to the nearest 16th note, just to avoid sounding like an orangutan with a snootful of rotgut. 🙉 🥃

[skipeb3]

Yep...been there, done that. The other day I thought hey, my SK1 sounds funny. I run stereo...turns out I plugged the R cable into the L output & the L cable into the headphone out.

D'oh!